by T. O. Munro
“The half-breed witch would not dare.”
“Maybe not her, but he would. Her Master would send Quintala back here in a trice. These gates can be opened wherever the caster has been before. A skilled sorcerer can open a small window to spy through, and then enlarge it to strike through. That is how she kept a watch on Hepdida’s sick room when Jolander thought she was scouting around the Lancers’ camp. That is how she found out she had to silence Hepdida and Elise both. ”
“There are guards on the doors and with Hepdida too. She is safe and sleeping now.”
“I did not tell Hepdida this, I would not want to slow her recovery, but we are not safe in any place Quintala has seen.”
“My parents kept a summer house by the sea in Oostsalve,” he said, trying to offer humour if not comfort to the Queen. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t entertain any half-elves there, they were a little snobbish like that. We would be safe from Quintala there.”
She smiled and his heart quickened to have wrought this slight easing of her mood. “I’d like to see that Captain, someday.”
“You have earned some respite your Majesty, earned it many times over. If Prince Rugan can forgive the insult of my accusations, perhaps you could leave the cares of the realm with him for a while at least.”
“Come, Kimbolt, the Goddess would prefer I had a realm to come back to. Rugan would not be anyone’s first choice as my deputy,” again that smile. “In the meantime the good Prince has his own forgiveness to beg and thanks to offer. There were a lot of people fooled by his half-sister besides you, myself included.”
“But he was the only one who never trusted her.”
“He was blinded by his dislike, by the blame he laid at her door for his Mother and grandfather leaving this world. In all that antipathy he let himself underestimate her, and that sin of omission cost him dear. It cost him his grand-mother.”
“It nearly cost him his wife as well, if you had not stepped in the way of Quintala’s spell.”
Niarmit shook her head. Kimbolt thought her troubled by the memory of the acrid council chamber, the air heavy with the sulphurous scent of discharged magic. “I’ve not seen you in a gown before, your Majesty,” he said anxious to distract her from painful thoughts.
She looked down at herself, with a smile. “Captain, I don’t think I’ve worn one, besides a priestess’s robes, in over five years. It is just that in my itinerant life style I have left meagre stashes of clothing in so many different places, that my stock in Rugan’s palace is quite exhausted. This is one of Lady Giseanne’s dresses, we are of a similar size and it is all she had to loan.”
She twirled around and gave a mock curtsy.
“It is very becoming your Majesty, it makes you look more…” He stopped himself.
“More Queenly, Captain?” she prompted.
He flushed red and nodded a hasty acceptance of her substitution for the word ‘womanly’ which had been in his mind. “It is most comely,” he hurried in search of a suitable compliment. “The colour, it quite matches your..”
She laughed. “Come captain, you mistake me for Hepdida, if you think that the idleness of fashion interests me at all.” She looked down at herself again and lifted up the Ankh with its pink gem. “This tracks her life now,” she said simply. “I haven’t told her yet that her father is dead, or what he did.”
And suddenly she was crying, the laughter and the smiles were gone, and great tears rolled silently down her cheeks and her shoulders shook in supressed sobs. He couldn’t do nothing. No man could do nothing in the face of such sorrow. He reached out his arms to her and she fell into them, clinging to him like a shipwrecked sailor to a rock.
His arms wavered uncertainly behind her, seeking out some place where the hands of a humble soldier could safely rest on the body of a Queen. In the end his left hand settled on the small of her back and his right rested on her head, combing soothing strokes through her auburn hair. She pressed her cheek against his chest, squeezing the breath from him with her arms.
“There, your Majesty,” he mumbled platitudes of comfort. “There, there.” His shirt was wet with her tears. “There is no weakness in crying, your Majesty.”
“My name is Niarmit,” she sniffed. “Hardly anyone calls me that anymore.”
“No.. er.. yes,” he floundered. “Yes Niarmit.” It must have been the right answer for she squeezed a little harder at his use of her name.
“There are things I have done, Kimbolt,” she told his sodden shirt in a halting broken voice. “Things I have experienced, things I have survived, and when I look back at what I have endured and how, my legs just turn to jelly at the sheer shock of it.”
“I know,” he said thickly. “I know, Niarmit.”
She looked up at him, no heavy sobs, or red eyed blubbing, just two steady green eyes, awash to the point of overflowing. “I know you do, Kimbolt.”
He held her closer. His left hand slid up her back, pressing against her shoulder blades, his right hand drifted down to stroke her cheek, a fruitless bid to wipe away her tears with his finger.
She said something he couldn’t hear.
“I’m sorry, your… I’m sorry Niarmit.”
“I don’t want to sleep alone tonight,” she repeated.
His finger ceased its brushing for a heartbeat, a long heartbeat. “There will be guards posted.” He tried to hear a meaning he knew she had not intended. “Quintala will not return. You will be quite safe, Niarmit.”
She looked up at him from within the circle of his arms and tapped his chest with her finger. “I don’t want to sleep alone tonight, Kimbolt.”
“I’d be happy to be your sentry, to stand the watch against the traitor,” he blustered.
She shook her head. He shook his. “Your Majesty, Niarmit,” he looked anywhere but in those eyes. “You know my past, what would people say? Please, think of what you are, of who you are.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t fucking care. Just for once, just for one night, I don’t want to have to care and I don’t want to sleep alone and I don’t want to be alone.”
A dozen thoughts chased a score of emotions around his head, but no words came from his mouth. He bent his back and scooped her up in his arms. He marvelled at how she seemed even lighter than that last time when he had carried her sleeping form to a cot in Hepdida’s chamber. But she was not sleeping this time. Her arm was around his neck, her head rested on his shoulder, watching his face. As he concentrated on negotiating the door, balancing on one foot to turn the handle with his boot, she reached up to caress his cheek, brushing her thumb across his lower lip.
He stumbled through the door and pushed it shut with his back. What would people say? He didn’t fucking care, and he didn’t want to be alone either.
***
Giseanne watched her husband seated on the nursing chair, the little lording Andros in his arms. The nurse maid had come twice to take the baby away and Rugan had both times, with the slightest shake of his head, sent her away.
“Husband,” Giseanne said.
Again he shook his head, more emphatic, bidding her silent.
“You cannot blame yourself,” she urged. “She deceived everyone. I trusted her. I thought I understood her.”
“I thought I was cleverer than she,” he said thick voiced. “I thought I had the measure of her, her rage, her immaturity. I thought her a child, I could outwit, even at the end, even at the very end.” He held the baby tight, running a hand smoothly over its pale head, while it stared up at him with unblinking admiration.
“Rugan?”
“I felt her holding spell loosen. I thought she had cast it imperfectly and I would work free before she could realise it. But that was just what she intended, for me to appear to escape and for her to strike me down, while Kimbolt’s accusations were still ringing in everyone’s ears.”
“That would have been murder, cold blooded murder.”
“She is a veteran of that, my dear,”
Rugan looked up at last at his wife. “The list begins with poor Elise’s father and her sister. She was party to young Eadran’s death. Tonight she meant to number you amongst her victims.”
Giseanne tried to shrug that awful truth away. She mumbled something of the heat of the moment, of covering an escape, but she did not believe it. She sat numbly in the chair opposite Rugan, shaking her head. “What hate could drive her so, to seek to injure me, who never did her any harm?”
The Prince looked up at her while the baby Andros suckled at his knuckle. “She wanted to hurt me, my dear, and but for the Queen she would have succeeded.” He shook his head. “I have wronged her Majesty and her kin so grievously and for so long. If you had not found your ways to circumvent my foolish wishes, who knows what harm I could have done.”
“And you still have time and opportunity to make amends, my dear Rugan.” She reached across and clasped his hand.
***
It had been a long time since she had last stood in this hall. The secret passageway by which she and the others had entered had been over to the right, but it was gone now, or covered up by fresh stone blocks. The ends of the hallway which had been sealed by heavy rock falls were now entirely clear. All the broken rubble had been carted away, and the mosaics had been scrubbed and refreshed. Beneath her feet was the picture of the harpies at work, in a murderous sequence of siren calls, lofty ascents, and terminal falls for the victims.
She supressed a shiver and walked towards the raised dais and its great stone throne. He sat there waiting for her. He had not changed in seventeen years, still the same blackened skeletal corpse dressed in rotted finery. But then again, if he hadn’t changed much in two thousand years, a couple of decades was hardly likely to wring some transformation in him.
Two orcs had risen from before the Master’s throne and turned to lurch away. They paused as they saw Quintala. Her silver hair, dark skin and cusped ears drew a hissing hostility from the green hided humanoids. She met their gaze with a level stare of her own as she walked on by. One of the creatures had the sense to immediately look away, the other tried a final guttural growl of contempt. Quintala barely broke stride as she drew her dirk, drove it up through the orc’s chin deep into its misshapen cranium and then moved on, wiping the blade on her sleeve as behind her the orc fell into a twitching misshapen heap. The other orc hesitated for just a fraction of a second and then decided it wanted no part in this uneven debate and loped away.
On the throne Maelgrum said nothing, but the tall redbearded figure at his side exploded into indignation. “How dare you! That was a servant of the Master, acting on his orders. How dare you interfere with the Master’s business?”
Quintala shrugged. “He shouldn’t have looked at me oddly then, not if he wanted to carry out the Master’s orders.”
The ruddy faced man, scowled in some disarray. Quintala had never met him, but she guessed this must be Rondol, the sorcerer. “Are you looking at me oddly, Mr Redbeard?” she said with a tone of mild curiosity.
“Er.. that is,” he frowned in blustering confusion, before seizing the comfort of a hard fact. “My name is Rondol, Rondol the sorcerer. I stand at the Master’s right hand.”
“Really,” she said oozing disbelief. “I’d rather expected to see the old fraud Haselrig in that position. Still, thanks for keeping the place warm for me.”
At last Maelgrum spoke and Rondol gratefully deferred to the Master. “Greetingsss Ssseneschal Quintala, I assssume your appearancsse in thessse hallsss meansss that your ssseventeen year missssion hasss finally come to an end?”
“It would seem so,” Quintala agreed, pulling a black medallion from deep within her tunic. “I expect I won’t be needing this anymore. I can receive my orders in person.”
“It isss a ssshame,” Maelgrum hissed. “An agent in the heart of the enemy camp wasss sssuch a ussseful asssset. You brought usss ssso much advantage.”
The disappointment was tangible as the temperature around the Dark Lord dropped a couple of degrees and the ever present vapour thickened around his arms. Quintala shivered, “but I am not just any spy coming into the cold.”
“You have squandered a priceless benefit to the Master,” Rondol upbraided her, trying to ride the tide of Maelgrum’s displeasure.
Quintala looked at him and then at Maelgrum. “Is this oaf really useful to you, because I am sure he is looking at me oddly?”
“Master, how can you let this half-breed witch speak to me like that, speak to you like that?”
Maelgrum raised his arm lazily, one finger pointed at Rondol’s mouth and the sorcerer suddenly found his lips would not part. A frantic hum of panic issued from his sealed mouth, as Maelgrum admonished, “do not ssseek to inssstruct me Rondol on what courtesssy I ssshould or ssshould not exsspect from my ssservantss. That isss mossst dissscourteousss.”
Quintala feigned an indifference to the sorcerer’s fate, scanning the length and breadth of the Dark Lord’s subterranean hall. “I like what you’ve done down here,” she said. “It has really opened it out, but still kept that dark foreboding atmosphere.” She gave a firm nod in agreement with her own opinion.
Rondol was clearly nonplussed not just by the half-elf’s behaviour, but by the Dark Lord’s indulgence of it. However, words failed him, or at least his ability to vocalise them did. Maelgrum flung back his head, emitting a creaking laugh. “You have ssspirit Sssenessschal, jussst like your mother did.”
“Yes,” Quintala said with a frown. “Tell me again about my mother.”
***
Odestus moved slowly through the narrow crevasse. The yellow sun shone down from its purple sky with a heat he had not felt in weeks, not since he last ventured into this place. He had discarded his thick cloak before stepping through the gate, he wished he had chosen a thinner robe as well. Still, not long to go.
The cleft in the rock turned sharply left and then became a tunnel into the mountain side. Though not tall he had to duck down, bending almost double to walk along the passageway, and then it opened into a huge vaulted chamber nearly half a mile across, the hollowed out heart of a volcano.
Water had collected in its centre forming a deep lake. There was an eerie glowing quality to the walls, from their lining of luminescent lichen. The effect was to light the hollow as brightly as day. Two shallow bottomed skiffs were being sculled across the lake. Figures in the bow dangled lines to catch the sightless fish. Creatures living at the top of a food chain which was driven by residual volcanic heat and the tiny organisms that could fashion raw thermal energy into organic life.
At one end of the lake was a small collection of stone huts and it was here that Odestus directed his footsteps. He trod carefully through fields cultivated with giant mushrooms and returned the cheerful wave of one of the fishermen on the lake as he went.
The huts were arranged either side of a single street, with a larger building at its head. Odestus stopped by the second one on the right, bending down to listen as he knocked at the fibrous material of the door.
A low voice made a sound which Odestus recognised as an invitation to enter. He pushed open the unbarred door and crept inside.
“Gud Tog, Odestus,” the low voice said. “Please be seated.”
“Gud Tog, Vlyndor,” the wizard replied as he slid gratefully onto a stone stool. “How have things been in Grithsank?”
Vlyndor blinked at the wizard, his H shaped pupils thickening within the yellow eyes, perched on the sides of his scaled head. Odestus knew he was not an attractive man, but felt sure in Vlyndor he had a potential competitor he would always beat in those village beauty contests they used to hold when he was a child. Provided, of course that the contest did not take place in Grithsank.
Vlyndor was an elder of the Karib people, but he was little taller than a twelve year old human child. His scaled skin was a dazzling mix of greens and purples and reds and he wore a rough tunic of woven reeds. The simple stool allowed him to curl his tail around so that it covere
d his three toed feet and he rested his three fingered hands lightly on his knees.
When a moment’s silence had passed without Vlyndor answering his question, Odestus tried to draw a further answer. “Not been troubled by dragons I hope.”
Vlyndor shook his head. “No, Odestus. Dragons always stay far North of here. We’ve not been troubled by dragons, no.”
“But you are troubled by something?”
Vlyndor blinked a little faster. “You not come for long time, Odestus, very long time.”
“I’m sorry,” Odestus replied. “I tried to, but it is not always easy.”
Vlyndor barked. The wizard jumped, always at the sound of Karib laughter. “Look at you, Odestus, you not change at all, me I get old, old and fat.”
In truth, Odestus found it hard to spot the signs of ageing in the Karibs, a deeper mottling of the skin perhaps, a slight slowing in the flicking of their tongues, but the bald facts were that Vlyndor had it right. Time for Odestus was passing more slowly than for the Karib leader, thirty times more slowly.
“What is it that’s worrying you, Vlyndor?” Odestus asked.
“Best you see, see for yourself.”
They shuffled outside and worked their way around the back of the building. Odestus paused at a little row of five egg shells, each big enough to have housed an ostrich chick. All were laid out on their own patch of stone with a carved inscription beneath it. Vlyndor saw the wizard’s nod of approval. “We do this for all of them, Odestus. A child should know where it comes from.”
Odestus nodded, and stroked a finger down the last of the egg shells. Vlyndor was hastening on to the edge of the water where the splashing told of excited children at play. There were four of them, playing a simple game, a game that transcended all barriers of plane and species. Chasing each other round and round until one was caught and made to be “it” and then had to chase the others. Three of the youngsters were Karibs, smaller versions of Vlyndor, one was not, but it was the odd one out who was winning all the time.
